Humble Joy - Part 2

Bryan Chapell: Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. Have this mind in you, which was exemplified in Christ. It's the attitude of his selflessness, being able to put others in front of him, because he loved so much that he put his interest aside for the interest of those that he wanted to be touched by the grace of God.
Guest (Male): So glad you joined us for today's Unlimited Grace, the audio broadcast ministry of Pastor and author Bryan Chapell. In today's episode, Pastor Bryan shares the second half of a lesson from Philippians chapter 2. Dr. Chapell highlights the need for fellow believers to serve side by side in mission for the advancement of the Gospel. You can find this lesson and many others when you visit unlimitedgrace.com. And while you're there, look for the many resources from Pastor Bryan Chapell, including a collection of short Bible studies called "Seven Days to a More Joyful Life." As Dr. Chapell continues this series on joy from Philippians, these guided studies will help you encounter the joy that Jesus offers to you. A joy that leads to Thanksgiving for our gracious Heavenly Father, who gives us second chances. Let's hear now from Dr. Bryan Chapell as he shares the second half of the lesson, "Humble Joy."
Bryan Chapell: Let me ask that you would look in your Bibles this morning at Philippians chapter 2. Philippians chapter 2, as we'll be considering verses 1 through 11. The Apostle Paul writes from prison. Paul is writing from prison saying there are two assured things that will happen if you're committed to Jesus Christ. One, that you will suffer. It is the way the master went. It is the way his servants will go as well. Not only will you face suffering. The second thing is, you will need the support of fellow believers as side by side, we are called to serve Christ and one another together. That twofold obligation is echoed in Philippians chapter 2, verses 1 through 11. Let's look at it and let's stand to receive God's word together. The Apostle Paul writes, "So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interest, but also to the interest of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." Amen. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we would pray that by the testimony of your people and the work of your Holy Spirit, we would be the instruments by which every knee would bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father who sent him. That this would not just be the words of church or the words of the moment, but the expression of our lives, that the world would look on and say, "Whoever is their Lord, I want to be my Lord." May the love, the power, the compassion of Jesus Christ roll through us so that his rule would be known for all who need him. This we ask in Jesus name. Amen. Please be seated. You know, Pastor Kerry and I, we were driving to Chicago for a meeting this week and at some point as we were driving, we got this picture-perfect view of three combines in one field harvesting the corn. Blue sky. Wonderful sunny day. And here was the corn coming out of the combines into the harvest wagons, beautifully golden and pure. We recognize what had happened, right? The husk had been torn away. The stalks were gone. The weeds were gone. Here was the corn without husk or weed or rot or blight. It was the pure corn coming into the harvest wagon. And it's the picture of what is happening for us at that great day. No more husk. No more blight, no more weeds, no more rot. Everything made right. What does that look like for you and me? I think of what I was just doing this past week. I'm on a commission of this church in which we deal with the issues of churches or people in conflict throughout our denomination. And all of these ugly, awful cases are brought to this final court of appeal, and we're listening to these awful tensions and grievances among God's people. And I have a friend who sat with me on those commissions for many years. And as he is writing, you know, all of the horror and getting ready for that, he writes and we email back and forth, and he always signs his letter at the end of all these discussions, "Heaven soon." Something better is coming. And it's not just the end of our conflict among and between one another. It's the end of the hurting that we feel in so many ways. As he and I were talking at a breakfast meeting, kind of getting ready for all the things that we were about to face, we talked about some mutual friends that we had, and one is a dad who has raised a severely handicapped daughter into her adulthood. And my friend told me that that parent had recently had his daughter in the wheelchair in a park on a sunny day like we were experiencing. And he said, he said, "Bryan, Jenny looked up at her dad and she said, 'Daddy, I'm ready to go to heaven now.'" Wheelchairs no more. Handicaps no more. Conflict no more. I was reading this week one of the reports from our wonderful chaplains in this church who visit people in the hospital. And one of the reports from somebody who's been there a long time with a lot of hurt and a lot of suffering. The simple report was, "He's just very tired now." Disease no more. Tired no more. Separation from Jesus no more. It's what we all have to look forward to. If we just take the images and we say, "Husk no more, weeds no more, rot no more, blight no more." We have to put it in the human terms that Christ is saying, "What would it mean if every knee bows, every tongue confesses that Jesus is Lord, and there's nothing anymore hindering the Lordship of Christ upon this earth?" What would that mean? It would mean pain. No more. Crying. No more. I don't have to do this myself. You help me here. It would mean shame. What?
Audience: No more.
Bryan Chapell: It would mean wheelchairs.
Audience: No more.
Bryan Chapell: It means cancer.
Audience: No more.
Bryan Chapell: It would be sin.
Audience: No more.
Bryan Chapell: It'd be loneliness.
Audience: No more.
Bryan Chapell: It would be longing.
Audience: No more.
Bryan Chapell: Shattered dreams.
Audience: No more.
Bryan Chapell: No more. It's the great declaration of the Lord on that last day. No more of this earth. No more of your sin. No more of your shame. God is saying, "Does he care for you?" Yes, he not only entered this world, he not only provides a way for your shame and pain to be put aside. Ultimately he says, "I will deliver it from you all in all that has hurt you and all that causes you to wither and cry, 'No more!'" And it is the great day that's ahead for the people of God, even as we are making our way through this world in all of its fallenness and hurt even now. How do people know about that? I mean, how is anybody going to ultimately learn about that great plan of God? Well, it is verse 1. "So if there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy," writes Paul, "complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind." Verse 5, "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus." Have this mind in you, which was exemplified in Christ. It's the attitude of his selflessness, being able to put others in front of him, because he loved so much that he put his interest aside for the interest of those that he wanted to be touched by the grace of God. Verse 3 in itself so important. "Do nothing." It's not just attitude, ultimately it's action. "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves." In the Greek that word "count" is actually the word for "lead." Lead by letting others' interests lead you. Lead by putting them first. It's a deep irony which expresses the Gospel so well, it's what Jesus did. He became Lord by suffering on our behalf. He became the God of all glory with the name that is above every name by putting himself second and beneath us all. And now Paul says, "Have this mind in you." Have this attitude reflected in actions that's willing to do the same.
Guest (Male): That's Pastor Bryan Chapell, and you've been listening to Unlimited Grace.
Guest (Male): Raising children to love the Lord can sometimes feel like a daunting task. The physical, mental, and emotional energy needed to engage with a child can also lead to feelings of inadequacy and doubt for parents. How then can you effectively talk with children about Jesus, or demonstrate to them his love? Written by Pastor Bryan and his wife Cathy, "Anyway and Always" is a heartwarming children's book designed to help explain the love of Christ to a child. The Chapells present the promise of the covenants fulfilled by Christ in a personal and meaningful way for young children to understand. Page after page of beautiful illustrations complement Bryan and Cathy's captivating storytelling. Whether you read this as a bedtime story or share it around the family dinner table, this book is sure to become a favorite of children and parents alike. You can request your copy of "Anyway and Always" when you go online to unlimitedgrace.com or by calling 844-41-Grace. That's 844-414-7223. And now, more from Bryan Chapell on today's Unlimited Grace.
Bryan Chapell: I think of a friend of mine recently who was recording what it meant when our church, our denomination, back in the 1960s actually made a declaration from Scripture that the separation of the races on the as though it was biblical in some way, was unbiblical. That the notion that there was a church for one race of people, one ethnicity of people and another church for other people, we said was scripturally wrong. And in the car on the way home from that meeting, that man, his name was Rudy Schmidt, said, "Well, if that's the mind of God, we better do something about it." It's action that's meant to follow upon that mind. What would it look like in this church if what it meant was we had the mind in us that was also in Christ Jesus, putting the interest of others above our own. It would look like serving children in Sunday School. It would look like arriving early and setting aside time and studying on their behalf to recognize that in those Sunday School classes our eternal souls of children. And even as our Savior served the eternal souls of these earthly children, we even have the mind in us that was also in Christ Jesus. I mean, the celebration we had recently as we celebrated a man and a woman who 50 years had been serving children in the Sunday school. I mean, what a blessing. And what a calling. To say God is calling us to serve one another. It looks like a church that would build a special wing, a special room for special needs adults. And there would be adults from this congregation who every Sunday, with no return to themselves, are ministering to special needs adults. Who cannot serve them back, who cannot in any way give recompense for what's being given to them, but they simply have the mind of Christ coming into action to serve special needs adults. Sunday after Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. It would look like people opening their homes at midweek to have other people come in so they could pray together and study scripture, knowing in any given week it doesn't seem to be doing much. But there will come the time that we need each other side by side. That we need to know each other and we need to walk through the crises and walk through the parenting issues and walk through all the difficult because we've opened our homes and we don't mind that we didn't dust that day. Hey, we suffer for Christ's sake. And we do it because we want the mind of Christ to exemplify what it means to be in service to one another. It would look like adults with grown-up families, continuing to meet weekly with young adults and high schoolers to say, "We will disciple. We will mentor. We will, we'll just be here for you, because somebody did it for us years ago. And it is the mind of Christ." You would look like finance committee members looking at figures and books and trends and dollars and weighing it all out and enduring the second-guessing of other people and simply saying, "We, we are doing this for the sake of Christ." After the first service, I had a man say, "You know, it's not just in the church, it's it's being a doctor and not retiring when it's my time because there's nobody else in this community who's able to take my place to serve the people that I serve. I'm giving up my retirement, my ease for the sake of other people. I believe I have a witness in this community. And for their sake, I'm going to keep doing what I'd rather not do." Because the mind of Christ is mine. It looks like all of us thinking carefully and I hope you recognize even today as we begin to to intersperse our worship practices, having having hymns and contemporary music and beginning to generationally consider others more than ourselves. I'm not just going to be here to serve me. It's not just my preferences as I think about worship and giving and prayer and the wonderful prayer team that came up here last week and they'll come up again this week by the way, and say, "We just want to come." I mean, we could we could we could leave and not be concerned, but we just want to come and let other people come and share their needs and their hearts and their hurts with us. And to believe that Christ is honored in that because what we are showing is that by by putting other interest above our own interest, what we are in fact doing is showing Christ, demonstrating the Gospel. It's it's not political correctness, it's not even niceness. It is the testimony of the Gospel. It is the purpose of Christ on display before his people. And when that happens, the Gospel just moves powerfully for Christ's sake. I embarrassed my executive assistant Karen Frey this week when she walked into my office and I was crying and that made her cry. She didn't even know why I was crying. It wasn't because of the sermon. I was watching the live streaming of the funeral of a very dear and old friend. Colin Schmidt was the wife of the long-term registrar Rudy Schmidt at Covenant College. The two of them never had children and that caused them some significant pain. But because they never had children, they gave themselves to the children of the rest of us in that college on the mountain. And even in their 90s, they continued to serve. Every single one of my children has at some point stayed in their home. Every single one of my children has done their laundry in their home at some point. I don't know why, but at some point they knew it was open to them. They've invited their friends for for picnics in the Schmidt's home, even in their living room. And I think of the the testimony of the Gospel for people who were more committed to serving other people than themselves. I mean, they could have just retreated. And it wasn't even that they were just serving those kids on the mountain. At some point, it was Rudy Schmidt that said in the car on the way home from that General Assembly in the 1960s, "If it's the mind of God that we should be together across ethnicities, we better do something about it." And the Schmidts with two other people were the first to start a Sunday School class in the urban inner city of Chattanooga. And it was that church, now mature, that was having the funeral for Colin Schmidt, Rudy's wife. Of the 150 actual nieces and nephews and great nieces and great nephews who attended the funeral, one wrote me after the funeral as I expressed my own condolences. The nephew wrote me saying this, "When I think of Aunt Colin and Uncle Rudy, my thoughts turn to Sundays." That was the day they left the house early to pick up disadvantaged women and children to go to the Third Street Sunday School and later to form New City Fellowship. They would return from church late because they had to take all those people back home. But that and the fact that though they were not the world's greatest cooks, they continued to have lots of people in their home Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, meant that they never even read the Sunday paper until Sunday evening because they were too busy serving other people during Sunday. "Aunt Colin," he wrote, "wasn't all that talented. Certainly not as gifted as many of her siblings, but she was faithful, persistent, inexhaustible, like a dog with a sock, even into her 90s." Well, you don't have to read that dog with a sock thing, but you get it. She's just determined to reflect the mind of Christ. And he wrote, "It's amazing how those traits, along with a few others when marshaled toward the service of God, are so admired by other people and so inspire the message of Jesus Christ." I couldn't help but think of it as I watched the funeral service. Black and white together, large church now packed for Colin's funeral. Though she was 92, and that's unusual, you know, usually if you're 92 you outlive all the people who come to your funeral. But there they were, packed into that church. Black and white together. And the first song that they sang was, you know, kind of the English classic, "Holy, Holy, Holy." But then the end of the service was the choir packing the choir loft, black and white together, singing the urban anthem, "Death is ended." It was the great declaration of what Rudy wanted the world to know, what Colin wanted the world to know. Death is ended because of the work of Jesus Christ in our behalf. Though we have known pain, though we have known suffering, we have known the mind of Christ. And in showing it, the world is being changed. The church is being changed. The community is being changed. God has shown us how we let other people know his love, how it changes people. He says it so clearly. Verse 5, "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus." And then what will happen? Verse 10, "So that at the name of Jesus, every knee would bow and every tongue would confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." It is our privilege to have the mind of Christ and our calling to show it. May God so use us for Christ's sake as we have the mind of Christ, his humility for our unity and the testimony of the Gospel.
Bryan Chapell: Hi friend, this is Pastor Bryan. I'm glad you decided to tune in and listen, and I would consider it a privilege to pray over you today. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, what a privilege we have to come to you in prayer. Your word says that we can come to you about anything, not just the big things, and not just the things that we think we have figured out. Instead, you love us so much that you say do not be anxious for anything. But in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, for your certain care, we can offer our requests to you. And then because we know that the God who controls all the outcomes of things on earth and for eternity, cares this much for us, the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard our hearts and minds for whatever we face with Jesus. We do not expect our prayers to end all our trials before Jesus comes. But we know that you will use our prayers, Father, to make all things work together for good until Jesus returns. Thank you for this promise and assurance. Give us the peace and the strength we need. Through these promises and assurances we pray. In Jesus name. Amen.
Guest (Male): That's Pastor Bryan Chapell, and you've been listening to Unlimited Grace. Please be sure to join us next time as once again we endeavor to put Christ at the center of our efforts so that lives might be transformed by his unlimited grace. This ministry is brought to you by Unlimited Grace Media and continues to be made possible with your generous financial support.